To ask how much 'surplus' money your household has at the end of the month?

[SeiShann]

This is not a stealth boast. I was brought up in a poor family. Single parent mum on benefits in council flat. I started my own adult life in a similar fashion, ended up a single parent on benefits in a council house. Somehow I managed to sort myself out though, went to uni and became a nurse. Not great income but more than I ever thought possible. My fiancé also earns a decent wage although we're not 'loaded' by any stretch of the imagination.
Anyway the point of my post ... I want to buy a car. It will cost £9k and I will pay for it by selling my current car (£2k) and saving up £3. The rest will be credit. Fiancé says we can't afford it and are not as 'flush' as I like to think. Just being nosy really and wondering if I'm missing something. So after all bills are paid and the groceries bought, what surplus do you have?
We spend £100 a week on groceries (2 adults, 2 teens). After that and all bills we have around £2000 surplus. I don't think that's bad myself but coming from a crappy background, am I missing something? We have no debts

Cardibach, with respect, you are mistaken. DH is a huge freak car lover. He has owned several classics, all bought for far less than £9k because he knows what to look for. Most people don't and car dealers see them coming a mile off.

My household is one salary (mine) and two people (teenage DD and me). Surplus each month of £1,500 ish, which I save and pay off chunks of mortgage periodically/use as income when I am out of contract and not earning. I'm an accountant and a sad one at that, so I have a monthly cashflow forecast with projected and actual savings and, if I'm spending more than budgeted, download my previous three months' transactions from on-line banking into Excel and categorise all my spending (because of which I always use a debit card, never cash) to see where I am "over".

It sounds as if you could easily afford a car if that's what you want to do. As a PP said, maybe this is a relationship rather than a finance issue.

Christ..... a fair few snippy posts. Is it a crime to have surplus money now? We have around 2000 spare each month which I try and save out of but also fritter. At one point I was so broke I lived on packet soup so I had enough to feed my two kids. Could you open a separate savings account and transfer a set amount each month? I suppose 9K sounds a huge amount to your DF. Have you sat down and talked figures with him? Spreadsheet?

Just save it. Then in 5 months go Ooh look I have 10k in the bank, let's buy a car.

As for how much surplus I have each month? None.

Presumably you don't actually have £2k surplus each month (as in "left in your bank account at the end of the month and transferred to a savings account" or similar) because if you did you would have enough for the car outright unless you had had other significant expenditure.

So presumably you have £2k after housing costs, utility type bills and groceries, but not leisure, entertaining, clothing, enjoyment type costs?

The ONLY way to work out where the money is going is to track it for at least a month.
Do you mainly spend cash? How much cash are you getting out a week? What are you spending this on.
If you mainly spend on cards it is much easier as you can go and look at the last 3 months of statements.

eg: I probably don't spend near to £50 cash month as I put everything on my Tesco credit card for the points - I put £1.17 on it today as I popped into tesco for something and as it's the clubcard as well it's easier to just pay with it. So for me tracking what I spend is easy - look at the credit card statement.

If you want to save then set up a standing order, probably into an ISA or a regular saver account, that goes out just after you get paid - that way you don't really see the money in your account and so don't figure it in your spending.

Personally, if I could see where my money was going, knew that I could easily cut down to meet the payments, could put £5k towards the new car as you suggest and could get an interest free deal to pay off the remainder over maybe 12-24 months then I would consider it.

Otherwise, and in you case as you don't know where your money is going, as you think you have £2k discretionary income a month, I'd look to be saving £500 - £1k a month and buy the car in 6-12 months time.

Like others, our household income is nowhere near £2k a month. There is no surplus, and only very minimal savings.

£9k is a lot for a car.

Put a set amount away by direct debit/ transfer at the beginning of the month, say £1000, so you'll still have some for treats and emergencies.

I think your DH is being over cautious, but it's easy to spend up to the amount of your household income without realising, even if you look at the scheduled outgoings and think you have a lot left over.

Or you could keep an eye out for 0% finance deals on cars. I begrudge the interest, so go for buying outright or waiting for deals.

This isn't about cars but £9k is NOT a huge amount to pay for one.

Op I don't think you mean surplus money really as that implies its left over and sitting there at the end of the month, I think you mean disposable income and with that amount taking 4k of finance is not an issue at all.

So the problem is neither the money nor the car, it's your DHs outlook if you ask me.

I am in minus figures if I wish to eat and put fuel in my car
And I have a reasonably paid job
Sadly I am a lone parent with large mortgage
I dread things going wrong with my 12 year old car which has done nearly 200000 miles and worry how I will replace it
I am in a job where I am classed as an essential car user

about £200 if we really try and haven't spent it on anything else. I don't think you do really have 2k a month or you'd have a fair bit of money in the bank by now. You need to write down everything that goes out - including lunch money, kids clubs, everything and then see. If you don't go out, where's the money going?

I think buying anything on credit is a bit stupid. The only debt ever worth having is a mortgage. You never know when one or both of you might loose your job or become ill or disabled.

Save up for it. Then always try and buy a good second-hand or nearly new car first. I think cars are such a waste of money. I don't think many people can afford brand new cars.

I don't have a great income, but I would never get credit for anything. I always make sure I have savings for things I might need in the future.

Well, nothing, really left "surplus". But we budget monthly for everything we'd need to pay over a year, and save for holidays and emergencies etc. So save an amount towards Christmas every month divided by 12. And we budget money towards takeaways/eating out etc.

Sounds like you don't account for everything you need to spend. Your DP might be right that you can't afford the car, or you might find you are wasting money that could go towards the car. But you won't know until you track what you spend your money on every month, probably down to the last penny. It's worth doing.

To answer your question, I don't really have anything "surplus" at the moment because I have a car loan now.

It cost just about £8500 (including all costs/insurance) but we put money down so only have a £7K loan. I have a 1.99% loan so am paying £32 a week towards the car (a little more than I need to to pay it off faster) for the next 5 years.

If you honestly have 2K "surplus" at the end of the month, I'd try putting aside half, or even a 1/4 of that and see how it affects the standards of living. So 500 a month it will take 12 months to save 6K.

All that said and ignoring getting a new car, you really should consider putting more aside as savings and perhaps seeing a financial advisor. There are so many things that could come up that you could be saving that $24K a year for. That's actually a pretty decent yearly income for many people. It's really hard to believe you aren't totally shocked and yes, ashamed, that you're wasting SO much money a year on random crap like take away yet claim you don't do anything... I'm wondering perhaps if your DP isn't being totally honest with you about where the money is going or your current financial state.

If you only need £4k (£2k from selling your car and already saved £3k = £5k already sorted) then surely just save for a couple of months and bobs your uncle!!!!

You'll save a load in interest and keep DP happy.

If it matters I have nothing left and am currently overdrawn. Life's a shit!

There was a thread almost identical to this not long ago.

After bills, food and fuel for car we maybe have 100 pound between us as extra cash, so in a month maybe go out for a meal or pub

We save about £3000 a month as our mortgage is cleared and we are both working with low childcare costs. I think until you are actually saving this £2000 you can't really call it surplus as you don't know where its going.
Id save and pay cash and while doing that get a handle on what your budget really looks like.

£9k absolutely is a lot if you don't have it.

£200 is a lot if you don't have it. What's that got to do with anything.
£9000 is not a lot to spend on a car. If you don't want to be bothered about MOTs for a couple of years, and you want a Mondeo type family car of half decent quality, you're going to be spending about £15K.

Just because £9K is a lot of money if you don't have it, it doesn't mean £9K is a lot of money in general in the car buying world.

As several PPs have said, it's not surplus if you're spending it rather than saving it! If I had £2000 left over each month then I would not be taking out a loan to buy a car.

We are very fortunate to be in a position where our income exceeds our regular outgoings (by variable amounts as neither our income nor our expenditure is fixed). With the surplus, we make sure that we have reserves to cover emergencies and any large one-off purchases (like buying a car!).

If you have 2 k surplus but don't really do anything then surely you should have loads of savings already?

So you clearly don't have a 2k surplus every month if you only have 2k in savings. From your clarification you spend a lot of take-aways etc., so yes your DP is right, you will not be able to save without impacting your lifestyle, but then your lifestyle sounds ripe for saving money with limited impact.

Do you mean that at the end of each month you still have 2K left in the bank, as in - your 2K savings aren't increasing each month because you are spending all your income? Or you actually have an extra 2K out of each month's income that you aren't spending?

I added up all our ins and outs and I think we may have about £100 extra. I save £20 a week in a tin, hide at my dads and this is my emergency's fund for when our £995 car will no doubt need money spending on it

Your 'surplus' isn't that though is it, surplus is in my opinion what is left in the bank at the end of the month, not living money.
Everything is relative and 9K to some isn't a lot to spend on a car, in fact I would say it was the lower end of average.

I think you need to talk to your OH and put everything down on a spreadsheet or the like and work out exactly how much you can afford to save each month towards a car, it seems your figures are speculative.